In the tiny town of Erwin, Tenn., history is the elephant in the room.

In the tiny town of Erwin, Tenn., history is the elephant in the room.

At the Unicoi County Chamber of Commerce, Cathy Huskins remembers one particularly angry tourist "came barreling through the door, and came up to the counter here and slung her hands down. ... And she says, 'I cannot believe that you killed an elephant!' "

Librarian Angie Georgeff is used to the strange phone calls and unannounced visits from world travelers:

"They just want to know, 'Is it true? Is it true? Did it really happen?' " Georgeff says. "Well, it did really happen. You know, there's agreement about that."

Sometimes Georgeff even points visitors out the library window, down the long vein of railroad tracks, to where it happened — to where the town of Erwin hanged an elephant.

This year, four high school students in nearby Elizabethton made a podcast about all this for NPR's first Student Podcast Challenge — and their 11-minute piece won the high school category.

"Kill the elephant!"

In the fall of 1916, disaster struck when the circus came to East Tennessee.

A menagerie of animals from Sparks Circus paraded through the small town of Kingsport, Tenn., just a few miles from the Virginia border. The show's star attraction, a five-ton Asian elephant named Mary, suddenly stopped. She had noticed a pile of watermelon rinds and veered off course for a snack.

Riding on Mary's back was a new trainer, a man who had been a hotel bellhop just a few days before, and he struck Mary in the head with a large metal hook. In an instant, the elephant wrapped her trunk around the man and threw him into a drink stand. As the story goes, she then stepped on his head in front of a crowd of shocked onlookers.

One man unloaded his pistol into Mary, but the bullets couldn't penetrate her thick hide. The townspeople chanted, "Kill the elephant!" When officials at the circus' upcoming stops made it known that the animal was no longer welcome, Mary's owner relented: Murderous Mary, as she came to be known, had to die. But how? And where?

What happened next has haunted the neighboring town of Erwin for a century. That's because Erwin was home to an enormous rail yard and a 100-ton derrick car with a crane strong enough to hang an elephant.

Elizabethton High juniors John Gouge, Jaxton Holly, Deanna Hull and Caleb Miller interviewed community members, archivists and politicians in Erwin to tell the story of Mary — and of Erwin's quest for redemption.

"Oh! You're the town that hung the elephant!"

A crowd of thousands gathered in the Erwin rail yard to watch Mary's execution, many standing atop idle rail cars or nearby buildings, for fear the elephant would rampage. Though not everyone was happy about the spectacle. One rail worker refused to participate because, he told his friends, he worked the night shift and worried that killing the elephant would haunt him on his night rides.

As the students tell it, a willing few wrapped a chain around Mary's neck. The crane slowly hoisted her a few feet off the ground. But as Mary began to kick, the chain broke, and she hit the ground hard. The elephant was stunned and sat motionless on her hind legs — as one eyewitness would remember — "like a rabbit."

The rail workers quickly got a new chain and hoisted her up once more — this time 10 or 15 feet off the ground. It's not clear how long it took Mary to die, but she dangled from the crane long enough for one onlooker to snap a photograph. A 1916 photo shows Mary hanging lifelessly from the crane. This macabre, visual evidence of the execution traveled far and wide, and it cemented Erwin's reputation — a town that few beyond East Tennessee had ever heard of — as the town that hanged an elephant.

"The stigma of Mary's death has haunted Erwin and its citizens for many years," says Hull, one of the podcast's student narrators. She and her classmates interviewed Jamie Rice, who lives in Erwin and grew up hearing the story of Mary.

"All the generations before me — everyone had a black eye over it," Rice says. "No one really wanted to talk about it. And whenever you did go out into other areas and you would say, 'Oh, I'm from Erwin,' and they would think about it and they would say, 'Erwin, Erwin ... why do I know that name? Oh! You're the town that hung the elephant!' "

But now, Rice leads an organization, RISE Erwin. As the Elizabethton students reported, Rice's group is trying to help the town embrace its history instead of hide from it.

Beginning in 2016, the 100th anniversary of Mary's hanging, Erwin began what it hoped would become an annual ritual: a weeklong series of events to celebrate elephants. That first year, the town paid nearly $9,000 for local artists to paint eight fiberglass elephants. They were displayed all over town and then auctioned off.

Rice says lots of business owners started getting questions from out-of-towners, asking: What is the deal with all these elephants?

"Well, that's their opportunity to say, 'We love elephants!' " Rice told the students.

What Erwin did with the money it raised is another stranger-than-fiction twist in the teens' podcast.

"I called them up, just their 1-800 number, and I said, 'My name is Jamie Rice. This is a really weird phone call. I live in Erwin, and we feel really bad about Mary.' "

Rice says she cold-called The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee — a home for elephants retired from zoos and circuses, about a six-hour drive from Erwin.

"And the guy just laughed, and he said, 'We talk about Erwin all the time!' People come to the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, which is right south of Nashville, and they want to talk about Erwin," Rice says. "And so he just laughed and he said, 'We will partner with you. We will help you any way we can.' "

Erwin Mayor Doris Hensley told the students that visitors now ask when Erwin is getting its next herd of elephants. It's become the town's new identity.

The Elizabethton juniors who won NPR's contest all say they didn't know much of Mary's story when they began. Their teachers, Alex Campbell and Tim Wasem, had their whole class work on podcasts.

But the deeper the four teens got, the more engaged they felt — to the point that they were all spending extra time in the computer lab and at home.

"Every town has that one thing that they don't want to talk about," Hull told NPR. "It just so happens that Erwin's is always talked about."

With their podcast, the students hope that Erwin will no longer be known as the town that killed an elephant.

It'll be the town that killed an elephant and is doing everything it can to help the next Mary.

Thanks for reading, leave your thought in the comment section below.

Jean Libbera (1884-1936), AKA "The Double-Bodied Man"

Jean Libbera (1884-1936), AKA "The Double-Bodied Man"

Despite their separate bodies, both twins shared a blood circulation and nervous system, making them inseparably connected.

When one body touches another, the sensation is instantly transferred to the other, and vice versa for weather and temperature changes.

Jean and Jacques often dressed in white shirts, trousers, and tailcoats for their performances as circus performers.

Jean Libbera , AKA "The Double-Bodied Man," had his brother, Jacques Libbera, connected to him from his chest-stomach area. He was born in Rome.

 

Jean Libbera (1884-1936), was the 4th of 13 children in his family – -14 if you count the small parasitic twin sprouting from his ribcage. The little brother (they named it Jacques) had fully functioning nervous and circulatory systems, and a rudimentary head that was buried in the host brother.

According to the ballyhoo, the family’s 3rd child was born with the same condition as Jean, but didn’t survive. A native of Italy (born in Rome), Jean toured the U.S. with sideshows many times, performing with Barnum and Bailey, and the Dreamland Circus Sideshow, among others. He was to marry and have four children of his own, all perfectly normal

 The parasitic twin was alive and could move as well. An X-ray showed that there was a head embedded within Jean with a circumference of about six inches. He got married and had four normal children

Painting depicting New Zealand troops climbing the walls of Le Quesnoy during the Battle of the Sambre, November 4, 1918.

Painting depicting New Zealand troops climbing the walls of Le Quesnoy during the Battle of the Sambre, November 4, 1918.

Today 105 years ago, on November 4, 1918, the Battle of the Sambre was fought as part of the Hundred Days Offensive. 

On the Western Front, after relentless assaults in the Hundred Days Offensive, the German resistance was weakening, and another Allied assault was planned along a 48 km front, from the Sambre Canal in the north to the town of Guise in the south.

In conjunction with the U.S. breakthrough in the Argonne forest, the British would cross the Sambre Canal and New Zealand troops would capture the fortified town of Le Quesnoy and the Mormal Forest. Further south, the French would attack at Guise.

For this attack, the Allies had assembled 16 British and 11 French Divisions, as well as the New Zealand Division. Over 1,000 artillery guns and 37 tanks were also provided for the assault.

At 5:30 AM on November 4, 1918, following a hurricane bombardment, the Allies attacked on the Sambre Canal, at Le Quesnoy and at Guise. The British on the Sambre Canal met fierce resistance from the Germans, who enjoyed the 21 m wide canal as part of their defense. The British suffered many casualties trying to cross the canal and establish bridges, and it was only at 12 AM that a 3 km breach was achieved.

 

Le Quesnoy was a fortified town with 9 meter walls as ramparts, having been in German possession since August 1914. The New Zealanders planned to surround the town and move into it afterwards. By 10 AM, the New Zealanders had surrounded the town, advancing 1.6 km. The troops attempted to move into Le Quesnoy, but the German garrison of 1,500 men put up fierce resistance with machine-guns.

 

Only several hours later did the New Zealanders manage to capture Le Quesnoy, when an unmanned section of the ramparts was spotted and exploited. The French attack at Guise was successful, as they captured it and advanced. 

George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence (21 October 1449 – 18 February 1478), was the sixth son of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, and the brother of English kings Edward IV and Richard III.

 George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence (21 October 1449 – 18 February 1478), was the sixth son of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, and the brother of English kings Edward IV and Richard III.

He played an important role in the dynastic struggle between rival factions of the Plantagenets now known as the Wars of the Roses.

Though a member of the House of York, he switched sides to support the House of Lancaster, before reverting back to the Yorkists. He was later convicted of treason against his elder brother, Edward IV, and executed, allegedly by drowning in malmsey wine. He appears as a character in William Shakespeare's plays Henry VI, Part 3 and Richard III, in which his death is attributed to the machinations of Richard.

George was born on 21 October 1449 in Dublin at a time when his father, the Duke of York, had begun to challenge Henry VI for the crown. His godfather was James FitzGerald, 6th Earl of Desmond. 

He was the second of the three sons of Richard and Cecily who survived their father and became a potential claimant for the crown. His father died in 1460. In 1461 his elder brother, Edward, became King of England as Edward IV and George was made Duke of Clarence. Despite his youth, he was appointed as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in the same year.

Having been mentioned as a possible husband for Mary, daughter of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, Clarence came under the influence of his first cousin Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, and in July 1469 was married in Église Notre-Dame de Calais to the earl's elder daughter Isabel Neville.

Clarence had actively supported his elder brother's claim to the throne, but when his father-in-law (known as "the Kingmaker") deserted Edward IV to ally with Margaret of Anjou, consort of the deposed King Henry, Clarence supported him and was deprived of his office as Lord Lieutenant. Clarence joined Warwick in France, taking his pregnant wife. She gave birth to their first child, a girl, on 16 April 1470, in a ship off Calais. 

The child died shortly afterwards. Henry VI rewarded Clarence by making him next in line to the throne after his own son, justifying the exclusion of Edward IV both by attainder for his treason against the House of Lancaster as well as his alleged illegitimacy. After a short time, Clarence realized that his loyalty to his father-in-law was misplaced: 

Warwick had his younger daughter, Anne Neville, Clarence's sister-in-law, marry Henry VI's son in December 1470. This demonstrated that his father-in-law was less interested in making him king than in serving his own interests and, since it now seemed unlikely that Warwick would replace Edward IV with Clarence, Clarence was secretly reconciled with Edward.

Warwick's efforts to keep Henry VI on the throne ultimately failed and Warwick was killed at the battle of Barnet in April 1471. The re-instated King Edward IV restored his brother Clarence to royal favour by making him Great Chamberlain of England. 

As his father-in-law had died, Clarence became jure uxoris Earl of Warwick, but did not inherit the entire Warwick estate as his younger brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had married (c. 1472) Anne Neville, who had been widowed in 1471. Edward intervened and eventually divided the estates between his brothers. Clarence was created, by right of his wife, first Earl of Warwick on 25 March 1472, and first Earl of Salisbury in a new creation.

In 1475 Clarence's wife Isabel gave birth to a son, Edward, later Earl of Warwick. Isabel died on 22 December 1476, two months after giving birth to a short-lived son named Richard (5 October 1476 – 1 January 1477). George and Isabel are buried together at Tewkesbury Abbey in Gloucestershire. Their surviving children, Margaret and Edward, were cared for by their aunt, Anne Neville, until she died in 1485 when Edward was 10 years old.

Though most historians now believe Isabel's death was a result of either consumption or childbed fever, Clarence was convinced she had been poisoned by one of her ladies-in-waiting, Ankarette Twynyho, whom, as a consequence, he had judicially murdered in April 1477, by summarily arresting her and bullying a jury at Warwick into convicting her of murder by poisoning. She was hanged immediately after trial with John Thursby, a fellow defendant. She was posthumously pardoned in 1478 by King Edward. Clarence's mental state, never stable, deteriorated from that point and led to his involvement in yet another rebellion against his brother Edward.

In 1477 Clarence was again a suitor for the hand of Mary, who had just become duchess of Burgundy. Edward objected to the match, and Clarence left the court.

The arrest and committal to the Tower of London of one of Clarence's retainers, an Oxford astronomer named John Stacey, led to his confession under torture that he had "imagined and compassed" the death of the king, and used the black arts to accomplish this.

He implicated one Thomas Burdett, and one Thomas Blake, a chaplain at Stacey's college (Merton College, Oxford). All three were tried for treason, convicted, and condemned to be drawn to Tyburn and hanged. Blake was saved at the eleventh hour by a plea for his life from James Goldwell, Bishop of Norwich, but the other two were put to death as ordered.

This was a clear warning to Clarence, which he chose to ignore. He appointed John Goddard to burst into Parliament and regale the House with Burdett and Stacey's declarations of innocence that they had made before their deaths. 

Goddard was a very unwise choice, as he was an ex-Lancastrian who had expounded Henry VI's claim to the throne. Edward summoned Clarence to Windsor, severely upbraided him, accused him of treason, and ordered his immediate arrest and confinement.

Clarence was imprisoned in the Tower of London and put on trial for treason against his brother Edward IV. Clarence was not present – Edward himself prosecuted his brother, and demanded that Parliament pass a bill of attainder against his brother, declaring that he was guilty of "unnatural, loathly treasons" which were aggravated by the fact that Clarence was his brother, who, if anyone did, owed him loyalty and love.

 Following his conviction and attainder, he was "privately executed" at the Tower on 18 February 1478, by tradition in the Bowyer Tower, and soon after the event, a rumour spread that he had been drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine.

A reason for Edward to have his brother executed may have been that George had "threatened to question the legality of the royal marriage" and he may have discovered from Bishop Robert Stillington of Bath and Wells that George "had probably let slip the secret of the precontract" for Edward's marriage with Lady Eleanor Talbot, although others dispute this.

Thanks for reading, leave your thought in the comment section below. 

Tortured, beaten, castrated by soldiers from his own army - for joining Mau Mau

Tortured, beaten, castrated by soldiers from his own army - for joining Mau Mau

In the eyes of many historians, the campaign against Mau Mau fighters was the bloodiest British suppression of any of their colonial uprisings anywhere in the world

When Mwangi Kanyari returned to Kenya in 1946 after fighting for the allies in Egypt in World War II, he expected land and freedom; to live peacefully on a small farm with his wife and family amid the fertile White Highlands that the British had occupied for 100 years.

Within a decade Kanyari had been tortured, beaten and castrated by soldiers of the same army he had been proud to serve with. His crime? Taking the secret oath and joining the underground liberation army known as Mau Mau. Fighting for independence, Mau Mau attacked police posts and assassinated Kenyans loyal to the Crown.

Assaulting remote farms, they struck fear into the white community, killing 32 settlers and making Mau Mau a byword in Britain for what was then termed ‘savagery.’ In 1952, a State of Emergency was declared and the full might of British forces rained down on the Mau Mau. Tens of thousands of Kenyans died. Exact numbers are hotly contested, but the Kenyan Human Rights Commission say up to 90,000 Kenyans were killed in the eight-year struggle.

Thousands were tortured or raped and starved. Many thousands more were put into ferocious detention camps. Over 1,000 alone were hanged after summary ‘justice’ was meted out by special courts. In the eyes of many historians, the campaign against Mau Mau was the bloodiest British suppression of any of their colonial uprisings anywhere.

That’s the legacy that King Charles walked into with his State visit this week. That’s why many wanted him to apologize for what the British and their allies did to crush the rebellion. Some argue that the 70-year old struggle is all ancient history and should be forgotten. But in Kenya the horrors of the colonial past are a living nightmare for many families who saw their parents or grandparents suffer. Unless amends are made, they feel they’ll never be able to move on.

A decade ago, Tory Foreign Secretary William Hague stood up in the House of Commons and sensationally admitted that torture had been used and that thousands had died. Speaking as the government paid £20 million reparations to Mau Mau victims, Hague said the government regretted the abuses and unreservedly condemned the torture as a violation of human dignity.

But worried the floodgates might open to further settlements, Hague’s statement stopped short of an apology and refused to accept liability for the actions of the colonial administration. Twenty million pounds was apparently the ceiling of what the Conservative government was prepared to pay for the killing and torture it admitted to.

 Boots 2023 Christmas advert sees Santa receive a gift

That’s the legacy that King Charles walked into with his State visit this week. That’s why many wanted him to apologize for what the British and their allies did to crush the rebellion. Some argue that the 70-year old struggle is all ancient history and should be forgotten. But in Kenya the horrors of the colonial past are a living nightmare for many families who saw their parents or grandparents suffer. Unless amends are made, they feel they’ll never be able to move on.

A decade ago, Tory Foreign Secretary William Hague stood up in the House of Commons and sensationally admitted that torture had been used and that thousands had died. Speaking as the government paid £20 million reparations to Mau Mau victims, Hague said the government regretted the abuses and unreservedly condemned the torture as a violation of human dignity.

But worried the floodgates might open to further settlements, Hague’s statement stopped short of an apology and refused to accept liability for the actions of the colonial administration. Twenty million pounds was apparently the ceiling of what the Conservative government was prepared to pay for the killing and torture it admitted to.

It is true there were killings on both sides and it must be acknowledged that Mau Mau performed some terrible acts – the massacre of 100 civilians at Lari was one example - but the truth is that the British behaved badly systematically and then lied about it afterwards, concealing documents to hide their crimes.

The grim scoresheet at the end of the conflict was overwhelmingly lopsided with Kenyans suffering far worse than the British or the settlers. In order to understand the depth of hurt many Kenyans still feel today and why they are so keen on a formal apology, it’s important to delve beyond statistics and look at the true human cost of what British forces did.

Take the awful story of Susan Nyareri. Like thousands of Kikuyu women and children, she was forced to live in a guarded village, locked in with barbed wire and overseen by brutal Loyalist guards as they made her work on construction projects. Thirty to a hut, the women were constantly beaten and semi starved.

When their small children went outside at night to relieve themselves, they were shot at by guards. If a woman was late for a shift she was thrown into a hole in the ground with snakes and red ants. The guard huts were not places the women wanted to go. Sexual violence was rife and many women were raped there or had unimaginable things done to their bodies.

But Susan did need to go once because she wanted medicine for her sick baby. Instead of getting it, guards whipped her and the baby she carried on her back. “I felt a lot of pain in my heart,” she told me in an interview in 2002. “Because all through the beating, the child never uttered a cry, not even once. He was probably too sick and weak from the pain of being whipped. He did not live long afterwards.”

While the women and children were suffering in the closed villages, their menfolk were rounded up and put into detention centres with names like Mwea, Embakasi, Thiba and Gathigirri. These men had been incarcerated in what became known as the Pipeline, moving up and down different camps depending on how ‘clean’ they had become.

When they went in, they were considered ‘black’, half way through they became ‘grey’. Only when they were deemed – without irony - ‘white’ were they released. This system known as the dilution technique was based on torture. In order to achieve this ‘white’ status, it was not enough to only confess being in Mau Mau. The interrogations conducted by guards overseen by white officers, required men to recant the Mau Mau oath – something that went across their entire belief system.

If a man did not confess or recant, he was beaten and tortured until he did. This was the systematic nature of the abuse, sanctioned by top British legal officers. In the end, most confessed. Although a hardy knot of prisoners refused right up to the last – until they beaten to death in the infamous Hola camp massacre of 1959.

Mwangi Kanyari’s screening involved being put in a cell where he was repeatedly tortured and abused. He said he confessed immediately yet was still tortured for eight days in a row. The worst of it was being placed upside down and being beaten so hard on his testicles that he lost them and the ability to start the family he’d always dreamed of.

“We just wanted to die and would plead with them to shoot us instead of punishing us,” he told me. Over the years I have interviewed dozens of Kenyan victims of torture and imprisonment like Mwangi Kanyari and have always been struck by their extraordinary dignity. Most, if not all, are dead now, but when I asked what they wanted from speaking out, all said they just wanted to be heard and understood.

They wanted their agony recognised; for someone to say the simple word ‘sorry.’ Yes, some wanted financial recompense – these, after all, were some of the poorest Kenyans – but it was not the main aim. As Elton John sings in a very different context, ‘sorry seems to be the hardest word’. Our new monarch, known for his empathy, not being able to say the word to the victims’ families surely is another insult to add to the grievous injuries already sustained by so many.

TO WATCH THE VIDEO AND TO SEE MORE PHOTOS OF THIS ARTICLE CLICK HERE.

Roger Godfrin, the only survivor of a massacre during which Nazi troops locked 643 citizens (including 500 women and children) inside a church and set fire to it on June 10, 1944 in Oradour sur Glane, France.

Roger Godfrin, the only survivor of a massacre during which Nazi troops locked 643 citizens (including 500 women and children) inside a church and set fire to it on June 10, 1944 in Oradour sur Glane, France.

For centuries, what made the medieval village of Oradour special was its succulent freshwater crayfish. A delicacy for lovers of good cuisine, they could be found in the clear, sparkling waters of the River Glane as it ran through the wide pastures of the Limousin region in south-central France.

This was a peaceful, pastoral village whose very name, Oradour, meant 'a place of prayer' in the local Occitan patois.

Until one sunny Saturday afternoon in June 1944 when a regiment from the 'Das Reich' panzer division of the Waffen-SS surrounded it and, in scenes of unimaginable horror, ripped it and its inhabitants apart, leaving nothing but smoking ruins with whole generations wiped out.

What happened to Oradour-sur-Glane that day 77 years ago — in a crime against humanity which can be fairly compared with the Holocaust in terms of its savagery — is graphically revived in a powerful new book, Silent Village, by British historian Robert Pike.

In it, he goes behind the grim statistics and the terrible symbolism of its destruction, taking us back into the lives of the villagers as they went about their everyday business, unaware of the disaster that was about to engulf them.

Here was a group of individuals, each with his or her own story that brought them — unwittingly, innocently, haphazardly — to the wrong place at the wrong time and to their terrible collective fate. Knowing their connections, friendships and rivalries makes their brutal end even more tragic.

Surrounded by farms and hamlets, the village itself was a bustling bourg of some 150 homes, barns and buildings spread out along a partially cobbled street.

Its shops, restaurants and bars were a hive of activity and gossip. Blacksmiths and wheelwrights plied their trade alongside a cottage industry of clog-makers, glove-makers, weavers and dress-makers. The village had its own brass and wind orchestra and regular dances were held in one of the hotels.

Once a month a lively market for animals and produce was held on the champ de foire, the village square, as it had been for the past 400 years.

There were four schools — one for boys, one for girls, one for infants and one for refugees — all thriving, and, at the hub of the village, a church, the Eglise Saint-Martin, dating from the 12th century. The villagers were blessed, living in their own semi-gilded bubble away from the war engulfing much of the rest of France. They had not seen a German uniform on their streets since 1942 when a convoy of soldiers passed fleetingly through.

Indeed, unusually for the area there were no active members of the Maquis, the armed French Resistance, in the village. Oradour was happy to be a politics-free zone: 'What mattered to them,' writes Pike, 'was putting food on the table and a trouble-free existence for their family.'

They typified the generally passive French attitude to their German occupiers. Shutters closed. Eyes shut. Waiting for it all to end.

This, then, was Oradour-sur-Glane on the morning of June 10, 1944. The children were in school, one of their teachers, Odette Couty, taking lessons for the last time before moving away to a new job.

Mechanic Robert Hébras should have been at work in Limoges that day but had been warned to stay away by his boss over a separate altercation his boss had had with a Nazi officer, so was at home, fitting an electric socket for a friend.

Men from nearby farms were making their Saturday trip in to pick up their weekly cigarette ration from the tabac. There was much chat in the bars about the village team's football match tomorrow.

Such was the serendipity of who lived and who died.

It was around two in the afternoon when, out of nowhere, the air was shattered by the roar of engines, as trucks and troop carriers bristling with rifles and machine guns approached Oradour.

Helmeted, heavily armed soldiers fanned out into the fields and set up a cordon around the village, trapping everyone inside. Inhabitants were rounded up at gunpoint or forced from their homes and shepherded to the square.

They were nervous, some in tears, but reassuring each other that this was just a routine identity check or some sort of military exercise. Nothing to worry about.

Mothers pushed babies in their prams. One old man had to be physically supported, having been forced out of his sick bed. Some villagers had been snatched from their workplaces — a baker stood semi-naked in his vest, still covered in flour from the bread he'd been making in his boulangerie.

Then came the schoolchildren, toddlers walking hand-in-hand in a line, their teachers calming them by telling them they were going to have their photograph taken.

In the square, four heavy machine guns awaited them. Soldiers carrying grenades were stacking up firewood. An armoured car arrived with more people picked up in the surrounding fields.

They were all left standing in the square for an hour. What was going on? Nobody knew. Nerves began to shred in the afternoon heat.

Then they were divided into two groups — men on the left, ordered to face a wall; women and children on the right, lined up together in a column. Fears grew. There were anguished cries.

As they were marched away to the village church, several women fainted.

Back in the square, the questioning began. Where was the Resistance's arms stash? No one said — because there wasn't one. The mayor was asked to select 50 hostages. He refused on principle.

The 200 men were split into six groups and herded into barns and warehouses in the village. Outside, machine-gun posts were set up.

Again they waited. Half an hour ticked by. Suddenly there was a loud boom from a tank and on this signal — it was clearly a planned operation — the Germans opened fire at random into the buildings.

'Bullets screamed in from everywhere,' Robert Hébras recalled, 'ricocheting off the walls.' Bodies fell under the hail of bullets and piled up.

'The injured were crying out, howling, some calling for their wives and children,' remembered one man. 'The Germans came in and climbed on to the bodies to finish them off with a revolver.'

Another recalled: 'A friend was laid across my chest and his blood was soaking me. I heard the breech of a gun click and then a muffled blow. I felt him shudder, tremble, then nothing more.'

Hébras himself was shot multiple times, but survived. 'The bullets had passed through the others and by the time they reached me they no longer had the power to go in deep.'

Given that the Germans must have been aware that some of their victims were still alive, what came next was even more barbaric.

They hurled straw and wood on to the bodies and set the buildings ablaze. Another survivor recalled the soldiers, drunk on wine and champagne looted from the village bars, laughing as they did so.

In the village church, 250 women and more than 200 children were squashed in and the doors locked behind them. They felt safe enough in God's house. Surely no harm could come to them there?

Farmer's wife Marguerite Rouffanche recalled them all waiting anxiously. Suddenly two soldiers forced their way through, carrying a heavy box, which they left in front of the altar.

She noticed it had lots of white strings hanging out. Several moments later a muffled detonation came from within the box and acrid black smoke began pouring out of it, filling the entire church.

The smoke was asphyxiating, so women and children began screaming and crying for help.

'Everybody was panicking and trying to get clear but there was nowhere to get away. People were climbing over each other, whole families, schoolchildren, mothers carrying babies.'

As the smoke engulfed her, Marguerite forced open the door of the tiny sacristy (the priest's robing room) and hid there with her daughters and baby grandson.

In the nave of the church hundreds lay dead and dying, suffocated by the smoke.

The SS threw open the doors and sprayed bullets in all directions, killing anyone still alive and splintering the plaque to Oradour's 99 1914-18 war dead. Incendiary grenades followed, and the whole place went up in flames.

In the sacristy, Marguerite could only watch dumb-struck as her daughters and grandson fell through the burning floor into an inferno below.

'More than half of those people were burnt alive,' Marguerite would later say.

Miraculously she escaped, creeping out of the sacristy under cover of the smoke, climbing a step-ladder to the window behind the altar and throwing herself through it.

'A neighbour, who was a mother of a small baby, followed me through the window but was killed as she did so. She tried to pass her baby to me but I was unable to catch him.'

Badly burned and riddled with bullets, Marguerite somehow managed to get away and hide. When it was all over, she had to be told that, as well as her daughters and grandson, her husband and son were also dead.

No one was spared. People approaching the cordon were shot and killed, including mothers looking for their children. Cyclists just passing through were stopped, lined up and gunned down too.

In one of the blazing barns, Robert Hébras managed to extricate himself from the tangle of bodies on top of him and discovered a door into a walled courtyard. He found himself with three other survivors, all of them badly injured.

They scraped a hole in the wall and ran for any cover they could find while soldiers patrolled the village, executing anyone trying to escape or who had come into the village looking for loved ones.

Systematically they burnt down houses, shops, the schools, the town hall, reducing the village to a smoky, smouldering ruin.

A dark cloud of ash was settling over the surrounding countryside as the Waffen-SS finally packed up and left. A few returned the next day to dig mass graves, burn bodies and properties to erase the village and ensure victims could not be identified.

Slowly a trickle of people came back to the village to find horrors beyond imagination. Everywhere they looked was a personal tragedy, an unbearable loss.

Camille Senon, who had been working in Limoges when the Germans descended on her village, found her father, grandfather, cousin and other relatives dead.

'The sister of my father, her husband, their daughter, had all been massacred, along with many other cousins. The youngest was 12 days old and he had a brother who was three and a sister who was two.'

As for the village itself, 'window sills still had flowers on them. Cooking pots hung in the fireplaces, and coffee pots stood on stoves. But the houses were in ruins. I kept thinking I would surely see a house that was intact, someone alive or a familiar face. But no'.

Maria Démery, desperate to find her sons, struggled through the thick smoke to the boys' school. She found it empty. One of the classrooms was in flames, the tables on fire. Schoolbags and berets belonging to the children were still hung up on the wall.

Nearby, a grieving relative who made his way through the still-burning ruins of the church stumbled on piles of bodies. 'Others, mainly children and half-burnt, were strewn across the nave.'

Inside the scorched confessional box were the bodies of two boys, crouching next to each other, one about 12, the other a little older.

Marie and Jean Hyvernaud came looking for their sons, eight-year-old Marcel and ten-year-old René, who had gone to school that morning but not come home. They found Marcel, laid out on his side.

Jean recalls: 'It was my little one. His mouth was open, he seemed scared. His foot was broken and twisted around. I was still able to give him a kiss.' But of René, there were not even his remains to identify and bury.

Corpses were strewn everywhere. One woman was discovered at the bottom of a well, her body so badly burnt she could barely be identified, along with other bodies that never were. The charred remains of a baby were found in dustbin.

Maria Démery never found her sons. In total, she lost 13 members of her family.

Oradour-sur-Glane has long been a cause célèbre for France, its people hailed not just as victims but martyrs. On that single day, three, sometimes four, generations of families were murdered, whole classes of schoolchildren were wiped out, even babies in prams were slaughtered.

In total 643 villagers died. The Nazi aim had been to erase the community from the map and they very nearly succeeded: only five lived to tell the tale — Marguerite Rouffanche was the only woman. Each survival was a minor miracle.

But the question remains: why Oradour? Why did the SS pick on this particular village?

Despite German claims, there was no evidence ever of Resistance activity in the village. The truth is it was not destroyed as a reprisal for anything its people had done, but as a terrible demonstration to the French people of what to expect if they took up active opposition to German occupation.

If it hadn't been Oradour, it would have been some other unsuspecting community.

Oradour was picked partly because its geography made it easy to surround and contain. But the main reason was that the SS knew the villagers would not fight back.

There were villages not so far away where there indeed was Resistance activity, but the SS did not want to risk a battle. Their destruction of peaceful Oradour was an act not just of evil and malice but also cowardice.

It also backfired. What was supposed to be a warning instead became a rallying cry. Until then, the Resistance had made little headway against the occupiers. Sparked by Oradour and other atrocities around the same time, the fightback began in earnest.

After the war, General Charles de Gaulle decreed the village would not be rebuilt. Instead it would remain as it was left — destroyed houses, rubbled streets, burnt-out cars — and so it is today: a permanent memorial to the 643 dead and a potent and unforgettable symbol of the cruelty of France's Nazi occupiers.

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Fallen Italian soldiers at Tolmin following the Battle of Caporetto, November 1917.

Fallen Italian soldiers at Tolmin following the Battle of Caporetto, November 1917.

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Today 106 years ago, on October 24, 1917, the Battle of Caporetto began, also called the 12th Battle of the Isonzo, or the Battle of Kobarid/Karfreit.

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The 10th and 11th Battles of the Isonzo earlier in 1917 had inflicted upwards of 200,000 casualties on the Austro-Hungarians, who demanded reinforcements from the Germans, as they didn't believe they could withstand another Italian offensive.

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The Germans formed a new 14th Army and sent it to the Italian Front with the task of conducting a limited-scale offensive to stabilize the situation. The Germans had experimented with Stormtrooper tactics and sought to put them to use here, and chose to attack at the village of Caporetto on the Isonzo river.

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On October 24, 1917, the Austro-Germans launched a gas attack on the Italian trenches at Caporetto, soon followed by an intense 4-hour long artillery bombardment of 2,200 guns.

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In protection of thick fog, German Stormtroopers attacked the Italian lines and broke through. Austro-Hungarian units attacked further south on the Bainsizza plateau and German Alpine troops captured mountain strongpoints too. The Italian defensive system proved vulnerable against the Stormtrooper tactics. 

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By the end of the first day, 10,000 Italian prisoners were captured and some Austro-German units had advanced as far as 25 km. In fear of being surrounded, the Italians withdrew along the whole Isonzo. Though the Austro-Germans were still able to capture thousands of Italian prisoners.

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By November 19, the Austro-German forces were exhausted and their lines were overstretched. The Italians repositioned themselves on the Piave river in Italy, where they beat the Austro-Germans in the First Battle of Monte Grappa, ending the Battle of Caporetto.

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The Italians suffered 43,000 casualties including 13,000 deaths, with another 265,000 prisoners lost. The Austro-Germans suffered 70,000 casualties, having advanced over 100 km in a resounding victory.

British military policeman escorting a wounded German prisoner, with a French cameraman following behind, November 13, 1916.

British military policeman escorting a wounded German prisoner, with a French cameraman following behind, November 13, 1916.

This photograph, colourised by @tom_photografix, were taken today 107 years ago near St. Pierre-Divion during the Battle of the Somme.

By the time the Battle of the Somme came to an end on November 18, 1916, the British Commonwealth forces had suffered some 419,000 casualties among 95,000 deaths, and the French 200,000 casualties with 50,000 deaths. The German losses range wide from 434,000 to 729,000 casualties, with some 164,000 deaths.

 

With a total of 1 - 1.3 million casualties and over 300,000 deaths, the Battle of the Somme is the single bloodiest and deadliest battle of the First World War, as well as one of the bloodiest in the history of warfare.